Bill Van Nest has done time in the Nevada
State Penitentiary for horse-stealing."
* * * * *
That was all. And it was enough--quite enough. I was a national figure,
as much so as if I had tried to assassinate the president. Indeed, I had
exploded a bomb under a greater than the president--under the chiefs of the
real government of the United States, the government that levied daily upon
every citizen, and that had state and national and the principal municipal
governments in its strong box.
I confess I was as much astounded at the effect of my bomb as old Melville
must have been. I felt that I had been obscure, as I looked at the
newspapers, with Matthew Blacklock appropriating almost the entire front
page of each. I was the isolated, the conspicuous figure, standing alone
upon the steps of the temple of Mammon, where mankind daily and devoutly
comes to offer worship.
Not that the newspapers praised me. I recall none that spoke well of me.
The nearest approach to praise was the "Blacklock squeals on the Wall
Street gang" in one of the sensational penny sheets that strengthen
the plutocracy by lying about it. Some of the papers insinuated that
I had gone mad; others that I had been bought up by a rival gang to
the Roebuck-Langdon clique; still others thought I was simply hunting
notoriety.
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